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Elf Queens and Holy Friars : Fairy Beliefs and the Medieval Church / Richard Firth Green.

By: Material type: TextTextSeries: The Middle Ages SeriesPublisher: Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2016]Copyright date: ©2016Description: 1 online resource (304 p.)Content type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9780812224252
  • 9780812293166
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 398/.450902 23
LOC classification:
  • BF1552
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources: Available additional physical forms:
  • Issued also in print.
Contents:
Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction -- Chapter 1. Believing in Fairies -- Chapter 2. Policing Vernacular Belief -- Chapter 3. Incubi Fairies -- Chapter 4. Christ the Changeling -- Chapter 5. Living in Fairyland -- Postscript -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- Acknowledgments
Summary: In Elf Queens and Holy Friars Richard Firth Green investigates an important aspect of medieval culture that has been largely ignored by modern literary scholarship: the omnipresent belief in fairyland.Taking as his starting point the assumption that the major cultural gulf in the Middle Ages was less between the wealthy and the poor than between the learned and the lay, Green explores the church's systematic demonization of fairies and infernalization of fairyland. He argues that when medieval preachers inveighed against the demons that they portrayed as threatening their flocks, they were in reality often waging war against fairy beliefs. The recognition that medieval demonology, and indeed pastoral theology, were packed with coded references to popular lore opens up a whole new avenue for the investigation of medieval vernacular culture.Elf Queens and Holy Friars offers a detailed account of the church's attempts to suppress or redirect belief in such things as fairy lovers, changelings, and alternative versions of the afterlife. That the church took these fairy beliefs so seriously suggests that they were ideologically loaded, and this fact makes a huge difference in the way we read medieval romance, the literary genre that treats them most explicitly. The war on fairy beliefs increased in intensity toward the end of the Middle Ages, becoming finally a significant factor in the witch-hunting of the Renaissance.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number URL Status Notes Barcode
eBook eBook Biblioteca "Angelicum" Pont. Univ. S.Tommaso d'Aquino Nuvola online online - DeGruyter (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Online access Not for loan (Accesso limitato) Accesso per gli utenti autorizzati / Access for authorized users (dgr)9780812293166

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction -- Chapter 1. Believing in Fairies -- Chapter 2. Policing Vernacular Belief -- Chapter 3. Incubi Fairies -- Chapter 4. Christ the Changeling -- Chapter 5. Living in Fairyland -- Postscript -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- Acknowledgments

restricted access online access with authorization star

http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec

In Elf Queens and Holy Friars Richard Firth Green investigates an important aspect of medieval culture that has been largely ignored by modern literary scholarship: the omnipresent belief in fairyland.Taking as his starting point the assumption that the major cultural gulf in the Middle Ages was less between the wealthy and the poor than between the learned and the lay, Green explores the church's systematic demonization of fairies and infernalization of fairyland. He argues that when medieval preachers inveighed against the demons that they portrayed as threatening their flocks, they were in reality often waging war against fairy beliefs. The recognition that medieval demonology, and indeed pastoral theology, were packed with coded references to popular lore opens up a whole new avenue for the investigation of medieval vernacular culture.Elf Queens and Holy Friars offers a detailed account of the church's attempts to suppress or redirect belief in such things as fairy lovers, changelings, and alternative versions of the afterlife. That the church took these fairy beliefs so seriously suggests that they were ideologically loaded, and this fact makes a huge difference in the way we read medieval romance, the literary genre that treats them most explicitly. The war on fairy beliefs increased in intensity toward the end of the Middle Ages, becoming finally a significant factor in the witch-hunting of the Renaissance.

Issued also in print.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 26. Aug 2020)